The Second Last Woman in England (Large Print 16pt) - Softcover

'South Kensington, London, 1953. Mrs Harriet Wallis is found guilty of the murder of her husband, Cecil, and becomes the second-last woman in England to be hanged.From this dramatic beginning, the story moves back a year and, detail by detail, the events that culminate in the demise of a wealthy and happy family are revealed. It was one year earlier that the new nanny arrived, a woman who is still recovering from the death of her entire family when a V2 rocket struck their East London home. It was a year ago, too, that the Wallises received a visit from police officers investigating shady dealings at Cecil s shipping firm, casting doubts on Cecil s reputation and traditional code of behaviour.It was a year ago that Harriet s life is first thrown into turmoil by the reappearance of a man she did not expect to ever see again and for whose safety she is gravely concerned. Set in a post-war period when a well-to-do British family s existence both outside and inside the house is ruled by a strict set of conventions, The Second-Last Woman in England explores the depth of emotions that are always there in every family but rarely surface. 23861 Death or Liberty reveals how the British Government of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries banished to the end of the earth Australia political enemies viewed by authorities with the same alarm as today s terrorists : Jacobins, democrats and republicans; machine breakers, food rioters, trade unionists, and Chartists; Irish, Scots, Canadian and even American rebels. While criminals in the eyes of the law, many of these prisoners were heroes and martyrs to their own communities, and are still revered in their homelands as freedom fighters and patriots, progressive thinkers, democrats and reformers. Yet in Australia, the land of their exile, memory of these rebels and their causes has dimmed. This is the first narrative history that brings together the stories of the political prisoners sent as convicts to Australia from all parts of the British Empire, spanning the early days of the penal settlement at Sydney Cove until transportation ended in 1868. Author Tony Moore asks who were these prisoners, and what led them to take the radical actions they did? Why did the authorities so fear these dissenters and rebels, and was transportation effective in halting dissent? What became of the political convicts in Australia and who escaped or returned home? 23862 In Bad Characters military historian Peter Stanley surveys indiscipline in the Australian Imperial Force, on a spectrum ranging from bludging and dumb insolence, though malingering and shirking, to military offences going beyond the force s celebrated larrikinism. He tells of soldiers who committed offences ranging from the endemic going absent to desertion and a small number of serious civil crimes culminating in several murders. The AIF s discipline encompassed serious riots and strikes, ending in the disbandment mutinies of 1918. Its indiscipline did not end in 1919, but continued while the force was repatriated to Australia, and continued in folklore and anecdote into the peace. Little to nothing has been published about the AIF s dark side about how war made men into criminals; how men let themselves and their mates down by going absent or wounding themselves. Little has been told about riots and protests, or of the toll exacted by venereal disease that afflicted so many. In Bad Characters Peter Stanley decides to face the bad. We learn things about the AIF that many may wish they did not know. But we will also understand more about the men of the AIF, the society they came from, and the war that changed or ended the lives of so many.